First off I made chocolate ice cream using this recipe from Murphy’s Ice Cream and my new ice cream maker .. it was so good I forgot to take any photos until it was nearly all eaten …

Last month I discovered www.foodgawker.com and have literally lost hours of my life scanning through amazing photos of food … its a great way of find new blogs and foodie websites too …..

Upon finding this recipe for Paprika Chicken I knew exactly what to do with some chicken legs in my freezer .. however I have never been able to achieve that lovely “falling off the bone” texture with chicken legs .. then I heard about brining so I consulted the foodie twitterati and both LikeMamUsedToBake and 9BeanRow are fans and gave me lots of tips. I covered the 4 chicken legs in water added in a handful of salt, a little sugar and some black peppercorns, covered with cling film and hoped for the best! This evening I took the chicken out, dried with paper towels before following the recipe as normal. The result was a delicous, simple dish and chicken that was really moist and actually falling off the bone .. RESULT!

I served the above with two other new foods to me .. quinoa and fennel! The fennel came in my wonderful bag from Home Organics this week and Sharon Dingle another great twitter foodie gave me a recipe… basically cut off the fennel stalks and chop, cut the bulb itself in 4 and boil for ten minutes. Then to the chopped stalks add chopped garlic, black olives, cherry tomatoes, a glug of olive oil and a glass of white wine.. add the bulb quarters and roast in the oven for 20 minutes! I’ll admit I am not a massive fan of the liquorice type taste of fennel but this was a really nice way of cooking it and went down a treat. Quinoa I have been hearing about since my student days working in an organic shop in London … and that’s not today nor yesterday.. but I had never bought and prepared it myself until last week. Its very simple and I just followed the instructions on the pack .. its a great alternative to rice or addition to salads. I can see it becoming a firm favourite in my kitchen ..

I had 5 egg whites left over from the ice cream making so with the help of text from my Mam I whipped up my first pavlova …

Kenwood whisking up the egg whites!

In an attempt to be healthier and because I don’t really like cream I used greek yoghurt instead …mixed in a little of my Mam’s homemade raspberry jam …and added some lovely juicy Irish raspberries …

It wasn’t as good as my Mam’s … but it was still really nice! The greek yoghurt (Glenisk of course) is lusciously creamy and so a great substitiute for cream.